Oh man – it was HOT this weekend. Temps were in the mid-90’s and the humidity was, I kid you not, 89%. So basically the air consisted of 11% oxygen, and 89% water. Okay, I’ll admit that this is not exactly how humidity percentages are determined, but when it gets to the point that one sweats profusely while sitting and it’s difficult to breathe in and out – WHO CARES ABOUT MATH?! Humidity makes me cranky. For that matter, so does math.
We filmed several scenes for The Monster of Phantom Lake this weekend, and it’s days like these that make me curse a poly/cotton blend. Wrinkle free? Yes. Breathable? Not so much.

FRIDAY
Friday night started at about 9:30 – there were a few scenes to shoot before anything I was in, so I got on camera round 11/11:30 – humidified (frizzy) hair, melting makeup and all. Ahh, to be the engenue in a movie. Comedy. Pure comedy. A few hours outdoors in that weather, and they could easily recast me as The Monster.

My favorite parts of the evening in no particular order:

At some wee hour, I was officially dubbed the “fire fluffer” since my girl-scouting days qualified me to keep the campfire going. I honored my badges.

At about 1:30 am, we had an unsettling interaction with some local fauna. During the shoot, we stopped due to some crashing through the woods out of range of the floodlights. Whatever it was kept getting closer and closer, and we all started to get quite nervous – finally, the thing burst through the bushes straight for us. It was worse from my perspective, because I was standing behind the director and couldn’t see what it was (but was thoroughly convinced it was a psycho killer). The director let out a frightened yelp, and grabbed the camera and tripod like a spear – I just froze. It turned out to be a dog-sized raccoon that took a hard right as soon as it came within 15 feet of us. Laugh we did, but I can’t say that did much for our nerves the rest of the evening. There were many suspicious twig breaks over the next hour or so…

The director accidentally swallowed a bug. While I truly felt for him, I couldn’t stop laughing…that was just too funny. Although frankly, there were far, far more spiders about than I would ever like to truly consider. And I can’t say I really enjoyed the persistent divebombings into the ear by those ginormous moths.

Around 2:15 am, we all started getting a bit punchy and couldn’t get our lines out correctly to save our lives. We finally wrapped it all up, and I got home at 3:15 am. I’m pretty sure I’m getting too old for this.

SATURDAY
Thankfully, I had Saturday off to recuperate.

SUNDAY
Sunday’s call was a very early, very unappreciated 8 am. That meant getting up at 6 am to shower, get in costume, do makeup and hair, and drive the 45 minutes to the producer’s house (near the shooting location). It was raining, so upon arrival we had to wait an hour and a half for the storm to clear. An hour and a half of cherished weekend-sleep, wasted. *sigh*

The day turned out rather pleasant - we filmed in a beautiful bay that looked remarkably untouched (well done, location scouts!). We were shooting a scene where the professor and I are taking samples from the water, and running them through various pieces of ridiculous equipment. At one point, I got up from the blanket too fast and just barely spared myself from landing in the lake head-first. Grace and I aren’t the best of acquaintances… And yes, that lovely stork dance was captured on camera - I feel kind of proud making it into the “outtakes” section of the DVD special features! Ah, the sacrifices I make for comedy…

To finish out the day, I rewarded myself with a head-dunking in the lake. On purpose, thankyouverymuch.